Sacrificing Virgins by John Everson Page B

box of breakfast cereal in the cabinet and Kara settled herself on a chair at the kitchen table.
    Jenna was not going to be waking up. Kara would probably never have her mom make her breakfast again.
    The TV was playing snow. Snow on almost every channel. There was one local access channel still broadcasting, with a wide-eyed, disheveled man screaming into the microphone. “They’ve come back,” he kept saying. “They’ve come back and there’s only one way to stop them: aim for the head. It’s the roaches, you’ve got to smash the roaches…”
    As I watched him babble, the door behind him opened, and a stream of people entered the studio. They surrounded the man, who leapt up on a chair and grabbed a microphone stand, holding it out like a cattle prod. Then he began swinging it wildly, like a bat, again and again until he finally connected with someone. The stand hit a woman right in the back of the head, right where the Luna Roaches loved to fasten. The woman went down. But then so did the man. There were hands all over him suddenly, and a buzzing sound slowly filled the room. I heard him scream just before a hand covered the lens of the camera, and then that station turned to snow too.
    There were still cable stations playing old sitcoms, but none of the local networks were broadcasting. The same with radio. At last I understood what they meant now by corporate “canned” radio. Only the FM channel programmed by someone a thousand miles away on the left coast still played the latest singles from U2 and Green Day. And I knew it was because they had programmed the schedule days before. Nobody was working the boards right now.
    For the first time since I’d seen the news story about Paul Hughes, I truly panicked. I felt the ice in my belly, and struggled not to fall to my knees and tremble like a baby in front of my baby, who was holding my hand and counting on me to be strong, to make things all right.
    Except that I couldn’t.
    Not even close.
    In the other room, Kara’s mom was turning into some kind of a zombie in her sleep, and outside, the world was awash with buzzing, swarming death.
    There was no way out.
    â€œDaddy, can I have more milk?”
    Blinking back tears, I opened the refrigerator, and pulled out a carton. I wouldn’t look at the missing person picture on its side. Soon, we might all be missing.
    â€œWe’re just going to take a little ride,” I said, as I buckled Kara into the seat belt.
    â€œBut what about Mommy?” She quailed.
    â€œMommy needs her sleep. We’ll bring her back some dinner later.”
    It killed me to lie, but I had to get her out of here. I had to get Kara out of the city.
    As we pulled out of the garage, I saw the door from the house open, and Jenna stepped out onto the concrete behind us. Thank God Kara was buckled in and couldn’t look in the rearview mirror. Her mother looked ghastly.
    Her eyes were vacant.
    I hit the gas and squealed out onto the street. I don’t know where I thought we were going to go. Somehow it seemed like this was a local problem; if we could just get out of the city and into the country, everything would be normal again.
    We never left the neighborhood.
    I pulled out on Highland and turned on to Norfolk to get out of the subdivision…but a block before I reached the main road, the way was blocked.
    They moved slowly, but they were moving. And they were moving inward, a barricade of bodies ten and twenty deep. They strode towards us, honing in. When one turned, all of the others followed, as if driven by a single mind. When I looked in the rearview mirror, I saw they were behind us as well. Surrounded.
    I stopped the car to think. The bodies didn’t stop. They came forward, slowly, inexorably. Their eyes were dark, and unblinking. I could see the tan shadow of Luna Roaches trembling on the necks of some of them as they stepped forward, one shambling shoe at a